10

The minimum number of hours each week that I need to fill with client bookings in order to keep a roof over my head.

9

My new bed time each night, if I’m going to be at my best each day to train the early rising clients each morning.

8

The number of professional development courses that I have already either earmarked or booked in to attend over the next 6 months.

7

Basic functional human movements to be observed, corrected, trained & blended together into a great workout for each of my clients at every session they attend.

6

The number of days to my next professional development course, which will be to receive a qualification in instructing with Bulgarian Bags.

5

The new time that I will be getting up each morning, which means that like it or not, I really need to become a morning person!!

4

The actual number of service categories that I will be launching with, with the fifth due to launch this September.

3

The number of weeks that I have set myself to have a nearly full PT schedule, which is a target of around 25 to 30 sessions – or about 12 to 15 hours per week.

2

Days to go until I start hitting the phones at a local gym where I will be starting to build my client base.

1

Happy Personal Trainer looking forward to enjoying the new career that I’ve worked so hard to begin.

Yes, it’s official. As of 4pm on Friday the 28<sup>th</sup> of June 2013, yours truly received his certificates which qualify me as a Fitness Instructor and a Personal Trainer. Only 10 minutes later, I had registered myself with Fitness Australia, and had my insurance paid and set to begin tomorrow, ready to start my first week as a bona-fide fitness professional.

I’ve spent the better part of the last 2 weeks attending to the things that need doing in order to get a small business off to a great start. I went to a 3 day induction in order to start working out of the local Goodlife Health Club, and I also attended my first additional professional development course to give me an extra certification for running group fitness programs in an outdoor setting. I’ve been busy getting all of my other business related stuff together as well, such as bank accounts, price lists, policy documents, making a start on my operations manual, and just way too much other stuff to mention. So in other words, getting seriously organised as I gear up for starting out in my new career.

Part of that getting organised business has been putting together a new website, which is kind of finished… for now. It’s needs more art, and it’s not the perfect layout or colour scheme, but it will do as a first run until I can organise to have someone look after it for me in a couple of months or so.

So as of tomorrow, Compass Personal Training will be officially open for business. I’m seriously excited about all of this, and I can’t wait to see what the next few months has in store.

How many times have you thought that you didn’t have time to do something important, because you felt that everything else in life was getting in the way and stopping you from achieving something that you wanted to? If there is one thing I’ve learned on my journey, it’s that people can easily fall into the trap of telling themselves lots of little lies, buying into those lies, and ultimately bringing about the failure they predicted in the first place.

“Whether you think you can or whether you think you can’t, you’re right.”- Henry Ford

So here I am facing a little dilemma, because I KNOW that what I believe is powerful enough to bring about the actions or consequences that I wish to occur, and while I believe I will get all of the work that I need to get done done in time to secure a job, the sheer volume of work that I need to do is frankly quite overwhelming, and all of this has needed to happen at the same time as when I get to see my kids for the first time in nearly 6 weeks!

Reality check time. My kids are more important to me than anything, so I give up the time that I should be working my ass off, because I value my time with my family more, particularly when my kids are concerned given they get to see so little of me as it is. It’s a choice that I make and one I make gladly. Now however, I have sent the kids back to their mother for a week, and I now have only a couple of days to get done all of the stuff I was struggling to get on top of before, and I find myself both stressed at the sheer enormity of the job I need to do, and driven by my own need to damn it all and succeed just to spite myself!!

So where do things stand with me and my goals? Well, I have registered a business name, located a gym only 20 minutes away where I will be able to kick off my new career as a kind of “franchisee”, and I am presently doing a big project for my fitness qualifications, which is putting together a business plan. The nice thing though is that I can kill two birds with one stone, but writing my real business plan, and submitting that as my completed project. Bonus!!

As soon as I finish all of the outstanding assessment tasks, I’ll be able to get my professional registration and insurances, and when all of that happens, I’ll likely be ready to go live with my business. I’ve been quietly putting together all of the stuff that I need to arrange such as website, business blog, and other stuff. My mum has been busy designing the business logo, and when all of the planning has been done and dusted, I’ll be ready to hit the ground running so that I can concentrate on building up my clientèle and doing something that I’ve discovered I am rather good at! :-)

I attended an induction week for the gym that I will be working as a PT with. It was a lot of fun, and I realised that the course that I attended for my qualifications was better than I had realised, because there were many other people there who weren’t as thorough or as attentive as myself and my classmates were during our course. It’s kind fo cool to realise that I’m already a better quality of trainer than many out there, and I’ve realised that I don’t really need to do very much to exceed the public’s expectations in terms of what I do and quality of services. But before I get a really big head and start thinking I’m SO bloody “superior”, I’m reminded that I really don’t care what the other PT’s are like. I really only care that I am the best I can be, that my clients will always come first, and that I have a really wonderful opportunity here to do some serious good in the world, even if only in my own limited way.

So the “vision” – if you will – is to do the best I can, earn as much money as I can, and sink a good portion of that back into a little research and development. What I’d really like to do is to develop several programs in conjunction with local allied health professionals to provide support for:

people who suffer with anxiety and depression

people who suffer with obesity and related illnesses

families where generation obesity is becoming a real problem

people who suffer with anorexia and bulemia, and related illnesses

These are all somewhat preventable problems, and knowing from personal experience how hard it is to keep motivated over a long term in order to get through many of these issues, I feel very strongly that there isn’t enough done to really deal with such problems with the immediacy and the efficiency that they deserve. I’d like to find a way to better educate people in order to try and eradicate such issues, or to at least reduce the impact of such issues on the people who suffer with them, and on the families and friends who are likewise effected.

So I’ll be planning and “scheming” over the coming months, putting lots of stuff together, building my business and preparing to give a whole lot of public talks locally, trying to raise awareness about many issues relating to health and fitness, and somehow managing to prioritize enough time to not only get all of this done, but also to keep in touch with the rest of the blog’o’sphere, and of course to spend as much time as I can with my family while all of this happens. I think that I can do all of this, and like Henry Ford was telling us, I know that I am right!

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It has been an extraordinary journey over the last 9 weeks. My face to face study time has finally reached it’s end, and with the exception of completing some written assessment tasks, I have made it through my training to qualify as a Personal Trainer! While there has been a lot of pressure and stress, there has also been a lot more in the way of fun and learning, and I have had the pleasure of meeting, studying with and working with some really amazing human beings, who I will count not only as colleagues, but also as friends.

Each person that I worked with was unique and wonderful, and each also taught me a little more about myself. From one of these new friends I learned a lot more about how inner strength and fitness are intertwined, and how believing in yourself can really make a difference with how you face and ultimately overcome the adversities that cross your path from time to time. This person also pointed me to a really great quotation by Socrates:

“It is a shame for a man to grow old without seeing the beauty and strength of which his body is capable.”

Those of you who know what it is to have been in a place in life where you don’t enjoy a great physical quality of life will probably find that this quote really resonates with you. I know that it does for me personally from my own experiences, and yet it also resonates in terms of my experiences during my course.

One of the great joys I have is when I teach someone something and I can see an improvement in their knowledge or skill. This was something I really got a kick out of when I used to be a kids soccer coach, and in the years since I had almost forgotten what it felt like. Those “feel good” vibes came back quite strongly during my PT course when I spotted some problems in a basic movement pattern with one of my colleagues, and I was able to use my newly learned skills to correct the movement pattern. Not only did I feel really pleased to have done something that helps someone else, I could also see with my own eyes what it is that Socrates was banging on about when he made is quote. There really is great beauty in watching a body move efficiently, and yet for the person who is moving efficiently there is also this delight that appears on that person’s face, and a sense of satisfaction when they realise that they can do something that they weren’t necessarily aware they were already capable of.

When we feel that our bodies are letting us down, it can be easy to convince ourselves that we can’t do something. We can convince ourselves that failure is inevitable, or that it will take a long time and incredible effort in order to overcome whatever obstacles prevent the thing from being achieved. In some cases this may actually be true, however for many this can simply be because they don’t really know how to move their bodies efficiently, and a few simple corrections to posture and technique can reap huge rewards in a very short time. For myself, I have never been able to do something as straightforward as a chin-up, which has admittedly affected my enjoyment when I am rock-climbing because certain movement patterns will tire me very quickly. So imagine my delight when I completed my first ever chin-up only a few weeks ago, and how now within only a few weeks of training I can now do 3 in a row!!

I saw something similar in others, where a weight was difficult to lift or a movement difficult to do, and when I corrected their posture and movement they were able to comment that yes they felt I had worked them hard, and yet the work itself became easier after the corrections. In a couple of people, their obstacles were less physical and more in the way of mental barriers. One person in particular kept telling me “I won’t be able to do…” certain things, and yet with a little mental coaching and encouragement, this person found the motivation within to persevere and apply the inner strength required to break the mental barrier and achieve more than she thought she would be able to do. I felt great pride in this person for her achievement, and so pleased that I had the ability in that moment to coach her past her blocks. Even better though was the “payback” when it was her turn to train me, and she pushed me harder than I might otherwise have worked myself. Karma may be a bitch, but it can also be incredibly fulfilling on both sides.

I’ll admit that I had some doubts when I entered the course that I might not have the ability to succeed as a personal trainer, and when the stress started to rise, those doubts began to talk louder in my brain. Now at the end of my training, I’ve realised that those doubts were some of my own mental barriers that I hadn’t realised I would need to face. I feel very pleased to be able to say that I’m hungrier than ever for this new career I have chosen. I know that I will be a great PT because I love helping others to achieve, and because I really do believe that it would be the greatest shame if my future clients could not enjoy the beauty of their bodies which they have an inherent right to achieve.

So what’s next? Well, the good news is that I have a job to go to. I’ve been asked by the PT Director of a local gym to attend their staff induction, and within the next couple of weeks I’ll be working for myself as a contractor and personal trainer in a place that is less than a 20 minute drive from where I live. I’m finishing off my assessments so that I can officially receive my certificates, which I will need in order to get my fitness industry registration and insurance, and I am rapidly creating the processes and products that I will need to start running my own small business in Fitness and Personal Training.

Yes… this shit just got real people!!

I am really excited about getting myself out there helping others to grow, achieve their goals, and fulfil some of their dreams. In doing so, I’ll be achieving a few of my own as well. :-)

Finally, to those of you special people who have been following my blog and my journey, and who’s lives have touched mine, I’m so glad to be back!! I’ll be allocating blog time so that my own physical fitness journey – which is far from over – will continue to be a feature here. I’m looking forward to catching up with all of you very soon to see how you’ve been going and to reconnect after being away for so long.

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"Semi-retired" former software developer with delusions of personal training grandeur, and the wherewithal to see these dreams become a reality. Now blogging my personal development journey towards better health & fitness, as well as about other fitness and self improvement topics that I take an interest in.